"I am here to work so hard 12 hours a day 7 days a week to get a Ph.D. in 5-7 years, then I will do a postdoc for 2-5 years and then end up unemployed doing more unstable postdocs to earn less than a librarian or a USPS mail man"

"I'm here because I want to work on explosives research and become a made man. Barring that, I'm hoping to learn how to make drugs in my spare time. At least I can be sure of getting a job when I get out."

I'm autotelic and weird and I actually kind of don't mind doing repetitive work if I feel it's working toward actually accomplishing something. I actually like the fact that there aren't really any set milestones or goal points. I joined because I want to do this kind of research in this kind of lab.

As one of my undergrad profs had put it over twenty years ago, "If I'd had only a couple more miles per hour on my fast ball and a couple more inches on my sinker, I wouldn't have had to bother with any of this 'science' crap." I thought he was joking, then. Now, I wonder.